Friday, 5 February 2016

New School, New Adventure!

The beginning of a new year brings with it a new school year, which is always exciting - however even more so when it also comes with a new school.  The school that I have moved to this year is a complete contrast to the school that I have worked at as a PRT.  Where my last school was a large, urban school - my new school is a full primary country school with only 120 children!  I was, and am, very excited about working in a small school that has such a tight knit community surrounding it but what I was not prepared for was driving to work this morning and having to drive for a kilometre through the middle of cows!  This was the image I was confronted with this morning.


Nevertheless, cows included I have loved my start to the year.  The students that I am working with are very receptive to learning and have the potential to make accelerated progress throughout the year so that they are where they need to be by the end of the year.  


However, with a new class comes a new set of challenges.  With my old class we had defined what learning looked like, sounded like, felt like - they understood the learning pit and that if they struggled it was normal and a key part of reaching success with their learning rather than meaning that they were on the road to failure. With my new class, I am unsure of where they stand in regards to what they have been taught learning looks like, sounds like, and feels like.  This morning I am doing an activity with them where they will do a bus stop activity, brainstorming in groups what great learners do, what active learners do, what previous messages they have received about learning from their teachers and what is important to reach success in their learning.  I am really excited to find this information out from these students as this will form the basis of how our classroom will run over the next few weeks and how our HPE unit on Culture and Community will progress.  I think the following quotes quite nicely state how as a class we are unpacking the year together and all bringing our learning experiences to create our own expectations for each other.





No comments:

Post a Comment